Employer Branding 101 The best HR professionals are becoming marketers. Find out why,

what your employer brand means, how to inspire current and future

employees, and how it can help you achieve your core KPIs.

We’ll cover that and more in this ebook, along with actionable next steps, and

other resources to continue your research on this increasingly important topic.

Catalyzed by the rise of the millennial professional,

candidates are increasingly focused on researching

companies before applying for a job, doing extensive

diligence on potential career paths, and generally being

picky about what’s next in their professional lives.

Let’s use a thought experiment to understand this new

behavior. Let’s say you’re deciding which restaurant you

and your friends should choose for dinner tonight. Before

making a decision, you’ll probably look at menus online,

and peruse Yelp reviews. You spend 20 minutes before

committing to a restaurant, and that’s for taco night!

Similarly, the job seeker’s decision making process now

mirrors typical consumer behavior. Everyone looking at a

job will do their diligence on a given company before

applying for a role.

A new talent acquisition paradigm

It’s just like Taco Night

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What is employer branding?

Why does it matter? What are the best companies doing to address

this key part of the talent acquisition equation? How do you document

your employee experience, so that company culture is clearly

communicated and existing employees can act as ambassadors?

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According to CareerBuilder, 68% of candidates are

spending more than 2 hours BEFORE applying for a job!

This is an incredible amount of time and effort, but makes

sense if put in the context of the impact a new job will

have on your life (remember how much time you spent

researching for taco night??).

The scary part here is that job seekers are doing their

research for a reason. If they don’t find interesting

aspects of your company or role, or they find disparaging

reviews online, they will move on. Ask yourself, if

someone researches my company for 2 hours, what will

they find? If someone asks a friend or contact about you,

what will they hear? Does the employee experience align

with your stated values? Do you have company values?

The rise in popularity of Glassdoor

means that companies need to be more

vigilant than ever in protecting their

employer brands online. 1 in 3

employees who are laid off will leave a

Glassdoor review. Just like Yelp, the

desire to leave a review is usually

triggered by a negative experience.

That said, there are many companies

who’ve done a great job in proactively

building their brands by telling their own

story (as opposed to allowing their most

disgruntled employees tell it for them)

via authentic employee authored

content that lives all over the internet.

The best of this content shows off what

it’s like to work at their company. Many

top companies are doing just that

through software like NextWave which

allows for easy content creation and

distribution.

Candidates are researching your company

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What is employer branding and why does it matter?

Perhaps you’ve heard that HR and talent professionals

are now expected to think like marketers. Your

employer brand is defined by how the world perceives

what it’s like to work for your company. It's your job to

proactively influence this by providing candidates with

the information they need to form an opinion of you,

the same way your marketing teams provide your

potential customers with all of the information they

need to form an opinion of your product and company.

It’s also critical to give existing employees guidance on

the kind of company you’re building, so that they know

how to be effective ambassadors.

Employer branding efforts yield immediate results

when you put this rich information in all of the places

candidates are finding out about your job opportunities.

Given candidates’ propensity to research your

business before applying, you’ll positively shape their

gut reactions on what working at your company looks

like. If they're the right fit for the job, this increases the

likelihood of applying for your open position which

lowers your time to fill and cost per hire.

Imagine a candidate considering Google. What will she

find during the course of her preliminary research? On

their careers page, there are specific examples of what

the day-to-day culture is like from real employees.

Looking at social media, their message and

commitment to employees is consistent with the

information on the careers page. Employees currently

in these positions are speaking directly about why this

is a unique opportunity. Candidates appreciate seeing

a clear, consistent company identity.

For Google, their content and the corroborated stories

on other platforms paid off in the the short term by

getting a new candidate into the hiring funnel. It also

builds a brand over time. The gut reaction for

candidates is strong, positive and aligns with all of the

things Google prides themselves on. This sort of long

term brand building creates a pipeline of interested

professionals who are right for the job.

“Candidates think hard about the impact an employer’s name is going to have on their resume. So as an

employer, it’s important to invest in your brand, so people can easily answer that question. You want to a

candidate to say “Working for this company is going to make my resume really stand out in the future.”

-Molly Howard, VP of Operations at Ovia Health

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“A uniquely collaborative culture”

If you are continuously hearing from

your colleagues about how they work

together, and have never been in a work

environment where people supported

one another like this, then you can very

credibly add this to your EVP.

“True autonomy”

Perhaps you’re recruiting engineers or

other ‘deep thinkers’ who value alone

time to work on problems. Or, maybe

you are targeting self starters in sales

roles. Whatever the case, this sort of

messaging can be quite powerful in

your EVP.

A few EVP Examples

Your employee value proposition is composed of the answers to the

following questions: “Why do I, and other employees, appreciate

working at my company?” AND “What makes working for my

company a unique experience compared to all of the other

places I could work or have worked in the past?”

Your answers can come in a variety of forms—from employees’

anecdotal stories, to phrases you hear around the water cooler, or

even from the excitement an employee gets when referring a friend.

If you ask your current employees what got their attention in the first

place and what keeps them here, what do they say? How do you

then communicate this to candidates? Don’t worry, we’ll get to that

later with some best practices.

Ideally, the employee value proposition aligns with your company’s

mission, values, and culture, as defined on the website and in an

internal knowledge hub like Tettra. This alignment will help foster

and maintain the best elements of your employee value proposition.

It also makes it easier for existing employees to tell others about

their experience working at your company.

What is an employee value proposition?

“This generation is looking for authentic, meaningful

places to work. You've got to convince them you’re the

best fit for their goals and lifestyle. They’re not convinced

by benefits and perks anymore. That's why tools like

Glassdoor incentivize employers to add photos of their

company events and showcase their commitment to

things like equal pay and diversity. Show them your story.

That's the only way to find the right candidates anymore.”

- Aaron Wheeler, Director of HR at Wistia

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A Unique Opportunity

HR has been slow to adopt marketing principles to attract

talent. It’s not surprising. Imagine if we asked marketers to

learn how to do payroll, or background checks, or deal

with compliance issues. It would take them a while to put

down what they were doing already, which was working

‘well enough,’ and get them to learn a new skill set.

This means there is a unique opportunity for the

companies who approach branding correctly to reap

massive rewards over the coming years as their

competition struggles to adapt.

On average, candidates are

researching your company for 2

hours before deciding whether or

not to apply. If